During the last century and early in this a number of writers, treating many early usages of mankind as peculiarly Jewish, endeavored to prove the Indians to be descended from the ten tribes. Others, with as little foundation in facts, endeavored to derive them from the Welsh, the Mongols, or Malays. The tribes of North America regarded themselves as comparatively recent occupants of the soil. The Algonquins and Iroquois had traditions of their journey eastward: the Algonquins styled the Dakotas men of the salt water, and, being pressed eastward by them, repelled their advance. The Athabascans kept up the remembrance of their emigration across the Pacific; the Ohoctaws came from the northwest, and the Mexicans are generally supposed to have come from the north, though the latest theories assign to them a southern origin. All this pointed to the northwest, where the abundance of fish made a natural halting spot for tribes till they were driven south by a new emigration. The Huastecas seem the first moving northward.

While language fails to connect them with any Asiatic families, their modes of life and implements are thought to connect them with all the earlier races of the eastern continent whose relics are found in mounds and shell heaps. - The most civilized parts when discovered by Europeans were those extending from New Mexico to Peru. There permanent architecture prevailed, the work of the occupants or of a previous race, the finest specimens being in the Maya region and in Peru, and the least enduring the adobe buildings of the Gila and Rio del Norte. Out of the limits of this district nothing but the most perishable structures were raised, the only monuments being mounds, often peculiar and apparently symbolical in shape. The inhabitants were divided into a number of tribes, whose natural state seemed to be that of war. The Esquimaux in the north were warmly clad in furs, and lived in close huts of snow or dug into the earth. The sea furnishing their subsistence, they invented peculiar boats, spears, and means for kindling and preserving fire.

Below them, the wild tribes covering most of British America and the United States were hunters and fishers, giving little attention to agriculture, except among the Huron Iroquois, who raised maize, beans, squashes, and tobacco, and seem to have been the earliest who carried on any trade. In point of manufactures they were about equally advanced. All made pottery. The Iroquois bark lodges were superior to the tent-like hide huts of the Algonquins, but the latter excelled in the manufacture of the ingenious -snow shoes and in canoe building, the Iroquois using elm bark, the Algonquins birch. The Dakotas excelled in the manufacture of stone pipes, and the Pacific tribes in that of baskets, some so closely woven as to hold water. The Rocky mountains furnished a sheep whose wool several tribes learned to spin and weave. In point of progress the Cherokee and Choctaw Muscogees resembled the northern tribes. The Natchez were the first tribe going south who seem to have had anything like a temple for worship. The Pueblo Indians of New Mexico had towns, built with a dead wall without for protection, rising several stories, and entered by ladders. They had also temples, and cultivated the soil.

The Mexican and Peruvian tribes were still further advanced; their range of manufactures and cultivated plants was greater; their means of perpetuating the memory of events better. At the north the rudest hieroglyphics formed the only means, the Micmacs in Nova Scotia hav-ing the most distinct system, and the only one which Europeans were able to adopt and employ; but the Mexicans had a system of picture writing of which enough has been preserved and explained to give us an insight into their history. The Peruvians at first had a system of recording by quipos or knotted cords, which, like the wampum belts of the north, seem to have been merely aids to the memory. The uncivilized tribes of South America, embracing the large families of the Caribs on the north, the Tupi-Guaranis on the east, and the Araucanians on the south and west, closely resembled in their state of advancement the wild tribes of the northern portion of the continent. - None of these tribes seem to have domesticated any animal except the dog, and among the Peruvians the llama. In no part consequently were there tribes leading a pastoral life, depending on their flooks and herds. Game was taken by shooting with the how and arrow, or by means of darts or spears; smaller animals were taken by traps.

Where game was very abundant, it was sometimes driven into a sort of park and slaughtered. The South American Indians used a blowpipe for small game, and the southern tribes used the lasso and stone balls attached to hide ropes. Fish was taken by nets or speared, and in some parts the fish in lakes were captured by throwing into the water vegetable matter that caused a kind of intoxication. The only beverage of the northern tribes was water, but the Mobilian tribes had their black drink, or cassine. In Mexico pulque, the fermented sap of the metl or maguey, furnished an intoxicating drink; and in South America a similar drink was the cauim, made from the cashew and other fruits subjected to fermentation. All tribes were fond of painting and tattooing their persons, the paint being varied for grief or joy, war or peace. They used as adornments beads made of clam shells, feathers, porcupine quills, and parts of birds and animals. The dress of the hunter tribes was simple, consisting of a robe and breech cloth for the men and a short petticoat for the women; in the warmer parts this petticoat was often a mere fringe of moss or other vegetable matter, and men went entirely naked.

The use of tobacco, generally mixed with willow (hence knikinnick, a mixture), was almost universal among the Indian tribes, and has spread over the world. It was introduced at all their important assemblies, and the Mississippi tribes made the pipe the symbol of peace, a usage which spread to other parts of the country. The word calumet, a French Canadian corruption of chalumeau, has been adopted to designate this national pipe. In Peru the leaves of the coca chewed with quicklime, just as the East Indians chew the areca nut and betel palm, produced the same narcotic and stimulating effects. The amusements of the Indians were the athletic exercises, running, leaping, paddling, games of ball, games with small stones, some quite complicated, and dances. These last were numerous, and entered into religious observances and preparations for war, as well as merrymakings. The sexes generally danced apart. Boys were trained from the time they left the cradle to feats requiring dexterity and courage. The probation of the young warrior was attended in some tribes with long fasts and rigorous tortures; and he acquired a name and a recognized position in the tribe only on his return from his first expedition or battle.